Esther McLean, Juggling Work and Home as a Woman in North Carolina During the 70s, Hist 150 Honors Spring 2021, Conducted by Joshua Kline, March 10, 2021.

Introduction to Interview

For this interview, I spoke with my grandmother, Esther McLean, who I refer to as “Gammie.” Gammie was born in 1945 in Hope Mills, NC and has seen many changes in society. She began attending a segregated school in 1951 that was not integrated until after she graduated in 1963. In 1971 she began working in a textile mill. While working she saw women’s rights come into the spotlight as they fought for equal pay in the workforce. She also saw the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision which said that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction.  Then in the early 90s with a NAFTA trade deal, textiles all moved to Mexico and one by one all of the local mills closed down. Gammie then began to work various other jobs before retiring in 2003. Gammie is a loving housewife and the mother to two children. She managed to maintain a balance between work and home. She is also the nicest person I know! I was very fortunate to have her as a grandmother and be able to interview her.

 

Gammie
Joshua, how are you doing?

Joshua Kline
I’m well how are you?

Gammie
I’m doing great. Thanks for asking. And I’m out here with no phones. No noise so we’re good to roll.

Joshua Kline
Yes, ma’am. Okay, so you’re all ready?

Gammie
Yes I am.

Joshua Kline
Okay. Can we start off with you just stating your name and when and where you were born?

Gammie
Yes, my name is Esther McLean. And I was born in Cumberland County, North Carolina.

Joshua Kline
And what date and year?

Gammie
March 30, 1945.

Joshua Kline
Okay. So we’ll hop right in with the first question. What was the typical education expected from women when you were young?

Gammie
Well, we were kind of divided us into two groups are college bound and the work bound. And we just kinda knew where our place was. If we would get into college, then they work because they went there, and the people that are going to jobs, we took other courses. And a lot of the people who when they graduated, they would get traditional college and get prepared to do like secretary jobs.

Joshua Kline
So like, when was this time decided whether or not you were college bound or headed into the work force.

Gammie
I would probably say about the eighth grade?

Joshua Kline
Oh, wow. Okay. And this is women who were set up for the secretary role.

Gammie
Um do what now?

Joshua Kline
And this was women that were set up for the secretary role.

Gammie
Yes, yes. Women women. It was called Worth Business College. And they prepared ’em and, you know, we got some shorthand [instruction]. But then you got more stuff at the Business College to prepare you to be a secretary. And of course the guys, the guy went in the military.

Joshua Kline
Okay, so where did you move on to from that?

Gammie
Say what now?

Joshua Kline
Were you college bound, or where did you head…

Gammie
No, no. Actually, I… I just want to be a housewife, and be a mother. So I really, I really didn’t have any job aspirations, either, because I got married before I got out of high school. And so when I graduated, I came home and I was a housewife.

Joshua Kline
And what was your role like in that relationship once you got married?

Gammie
Well, I took care of the household, and he worked a job or two jobs as needed. And he always was involved in our department. And so that left me home with the children and cooking.

Joshua Kline
So you eventually got a job? Correct?

Gammie
Yes, when they [the children] got in school, and that was customary back then. A lot of my friends, they stayed home, we were able to stay home until the children started the school and then we, you know, we had to fill our time with something and also the money. It helped out in the family, in the finance.

Joshua Kline
And what were these various jobs you had?

Gammie
Well, the first job I ever had, and I worked there 22 years was Dixie Yarns. It was textiles, cotton mill.

Joshua Kline
And what were the working conditions like in that?

Gammie
Actually, it was pretty good. We, we worked hard and it was hot. We had to have the temperature always hot in there between I think it’s like 93 and 96 degrees at all times for the cotton to run and not ball-up. And we got breaks. And yeah, for the most part it was it was good. We stayed on our own job, everybody if you went in as a spinner, you usually stayed a spinner until you retired and I ran a spooler. And so that was my job was running a spooler.

Joshua Kline
So was there like anything in there? Like, they would like rip the fingers off or anything I believe. Briefly, I remember you telling me about one time.

Gammie
Yeah, the combers that comb the cotton. They had like rocking bars that swung back and forth. And yeah, there were some accidents and people did lose fingers when they will be cleaning up underneath and they put their hand in the wrong place.

Joshua Kline
And what were the like differences? I know, we’ve been talking about differences between males and females up to this point, but between whites and people of color, what were the differences that you noticed.

Gammie
There were no people of color when I went to work in 1971. I think there was one guy and he was the floor sweeper. That then as we entered into the the mid 70s, I seen the the color change come, there was more… we reached out. And kind of more (people of color).

Joshua Kline
And you mentioned that your neighbors were people of color.

Gammie
They were! I grew up in a neighborhood, (with) people of color. And we would just we respected each other. And we were friends. Yeah. We were neighbors!

Joshua Kline
Yeah. Getting back to like, jobs, did you have any other jobs?

Gammie
Yes I did. When the mill shut down. And we’ll get on that subject later, the NAFTA agreement. It took all the mill jobs. For textiles went to Mexico. So then I became a cafeteria worker, and I worked in the summer (corrects herself) in the springtime. And then when summer came, I went back to school. And I went for food management. And I went there for approximately a year. And then I had a chance to go back and one textile mill was left. So I went there but only worked five months. And they laid off the whole second shift. Because their business also was transforming into Mexico.

Joshua Kline
Do you know why they like moved all these businesses to Mexico, I’m just curious?

Gammie
It was the NAFTA agreement. Don’t know how familiar you are with that, but it’s like they paid no taxes in Mexico. And they could get like laborers at work for 57 cents an hour. They were paying us here in the States. We were I think I was making probably like $6 and a quarter maybe an hour.

Joshua Kline
And what was minimum wage at that time?

Gammie
A dollar and 35 cents.

Joshua Kline
Okay, wow, that’s crazy compared to now.

Gammie
That then then I had a chance to go to work after I got the five month layoff (unclear) and I went over to (unclear again). And I stayed there about two and a half years, (correcting) about four, about four years. And then I went to school for general manufacturing technician and I was hired on by (unclear), which is.. coperation now. And that was an electrical we made electrical supplies.

Joshua Kline
and jobs after that?

Gammie
That would be it. I came home after I got laid off from… Hammer. I just stayed home and helped my husband.

Joshua Kline
Okay. And what year was that when you were done working?

Gammie
2003.

Joshua Kline
Okay. And while you’re at the cotton mill was like that time frame.

Gammie
What was what now?

Joshua Kline
When you started working, like the textile mill and then stopped working, what years were those?

Gammie
1971 I began and 1992 the mill closed down.

Joshua Kline
Okay. You mentioned like, like, how you were balancing like children and work. How did that affect everything? Like, how did you manage the balance them?

Gammie
It was pretty cool. They were old enough, they could stay by themselves, and I worked third shift. So I was home, asleep, and they were in school. Then during the summer I found programs for them to go to. And they stayed pretty busy, the children, you know, they more or less, were able to stay by themselves with me in the house with them.

Joshua Kline
Were there ever any points where it became like, very difficult to balance like a job. And then..

Gammie
Umm no, not really, because I had the support my husband worked here in town. So he was close by. And he brought them lunch every day. So no, we had a good thing going.

Joshua Kline
So he carried his fair shair of the burden?

Gammie
Yes, Yes, he did.

Joshua Kline
So, you mentioned earlier how, like, you noticed more people of color began to work as like, time progressed in the textile mill. What other changes did you notice?

Gammie
Well, we got more college educated people that came in management, but they were not very, they were not very good. It didn’t work out good. Because in textile, you need to know it from the ground up. And so we had a lot of change in management, because they, they didn’t last because they didn’t know their job.

Joshua Kline
So difference between being book smart and work smart.

Gammie
You got to have both it’s got to be it’s got to be hand in hand, he got to know, you gotta know the bottom step before you can go into the office.

Joshua Kline
So just wrapping things up here… over, like, Can you give us like a broad overview of just your life is like a housewife/worker? And just how that whole relationship played out?

Gammie
Well, yes, it was. It was good. I knew I wanted to go out and do stuff. And as the children got older, because I didn’t want to just sit at home. So we had the textile mills were right here in town, and it was close to my house, and I could also go to school and pick the children up when they were sick. And I could leave my work. That’s it, I could pick the children up and be back in like seven minutes, but there were no spotlights and all that stuff back then.

Joshua Kline
But overall, they had a very nice balance between the relationship with your husband work and kids and all that.

Gammie
Yes, because when I couldn’t be here. He was always here. One of us was always with the children.

Joshua Kline
Okay. And my final question, here is the one I’m most interested in. If you have any advice for me, what would it be?

Gammie
I would say number one, keep God the center of your life. And the second to get all your education that you can possibly get before you consider starting a family.

Joshua Kline
Well okay, you have anything else you’d like to talk about? Or you think you covered it?

Gammie
I think we pretty much covered it. Unless there’s something else on your end you need?

Joshua Kline
No, ma’am. I enjoyed hearing about all this. And I’ll call you sou soon again after this.

Gammie
Ok!

Joshua Kline
Ok, well love you Gammie! Thank you!

Gammie
Love you too Joshua! Bye bye now!

Joshua Kline
Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

As I researched my sources, I wanted something that would help me learn a bit about her perspective beforehand. I read about women in the workplace during the 70s. This article talked about the increasing number of female workers after over a decade of women starting to work. It also covered how they were far from equality, however. The article also covered aspects that I wasn’t expecting such as their changing role in the household going beyond just being seen as the caretaker and cook. The second article covered similar aspects mainly covering the wage gap that was still present, however. The third source described the happenings of a textile mill in NC. While I wasn’t specifically looking for a geographically related article, it certainly helped assure me that it was relevant. The article described the machinery of a mill. The workers were also described and the experience needed to run the machines. The final article was about NAFTA. NAFTA stands for North American Free Trade Agreement which was briefly mentioned in the interview. It was enacted in 1994 and cut the taxation on exports and imports between Mexico, Canada, and The United States.

Bibliography

North American free trade Agreement (NAFTA). Retrieved March 26, 2021, from https://www.trade.gov/north-american-free-trade-agreement-nafta

Seamone, Emily. Women and Work in the 1970s. 12 Aug. 2014, www.womenworklife.com/2014/07/30/work-life-really-like-women-1970s/.

Walbert, Kathryn, and James Leloudis. “NCpedia: NCpedia.” Link to NCpedia Main Page, www.ncpedia.org/anchor/work-textile-mill.

Yellen , Janet. “The History of Women’s Work and Wages and How It Has Created Success for Us All.” Brookings, Brookings, 6 Jan. 2021, www.brookings.edu/essay/the-history-of-womens-work-and-wages-and-how-it-has-created-success-for-us-all/.

 

The interviewee approved this transcript on 3/21/21. No changes necessary.

TapeACall was used to record this interview and Otter AI was used to transcribe the interview.

While transcribing, I have notable difficultly understanding parts of the phone call where service cut out for a second. I also had trouble understanding the names of businesses over the phone. I keep certain phrases the exact same on the transcription so it didn’t take away from the way she speaks along with myself who says “like” fairly often.